mystical experiences
mystical experiences
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Mystical experience and scriptures
There seems to be direct relation between the reading of scriptures and mystical experience. Of course when you read for example: ““ If you wish to come after me, deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24) (189), it has inevitably some kind of effect on the reader. The statement is very profound and if person is lucky he will see beyond the statement. That is the whole point; to see beyond these statements; the menu is not the food! These texts are very important and can serve as a tool for potential transformation, but eventually (if someone does not recognize the futility of depending on whatever text) these text will become mechanical and loose their effect. This is not an intellectual argument, this is actual fact. As Jesus said “ Kingdom of heave is within”, and these texts are obviously without. There is a danger of dependency, just as person can be dependent on alcohol, drugs, or work or anything else. Texts ought to be used and returned back to for relevance, but ultimately person has to go beyond these or dependency will be established. How many times you can listen to some beautiful song before you get tired of it? And it is the same with reading; it will loose it’s effect and you are back to your anxiety. Anything on the outside is a form and we are (in mysticism) aiming at experiencing the formless. So it is very important to understand the difference actually in going through it. Nevertheless scripture and even the readings in this class, for example in the Meister Eckhart readings: “See, as he is one and simple, that is how he can enter this oneness, which I call the citadel of the soul, and in no other way he can enter it” (164) or St. Francis readings when it says: “Their poverty seemed to them overflowing abundance.”(212) ; they all have inevitably effect on reader who is ready to receive, and it does not necessarily have to be only the scripture.
Person can not deny himself if he is still depending on the scripture. Depending on scripture is depending on some form and depending on some form is nothing less than God’s denial. People place all these profound ideas in front of God and that is reason while we are still in such a mess. Obviously if scriptures were the ultimate solution, than we could all just read it and be liberated instantaneously, but ultimately they are not God and people tend to forget that. They are beautiful tools to be used and left behind. As soon as you make scripture in God you are willing to kill for it, you have gotten the justification to murder ( hence the religious wars), and. So there is not only a problem of dependence involved in this. We have to be very careful and see for ourselves the futility of dependence and identification with scriptures, but at the same time we can use scripture as powerful tool. It is rather a matter of balance and clear seeing. Meister Eckhart understood very well another problem when he says in the Selective Writings: “No one can understand or teach St. Paul’s writings unless they possess the same spirit in which St Paul spoke and wrote. And it is my constant complaint, that unintelligent people who neither posses nor have any part of the Spirit of God wish to understand with their primitive human reason what they hear or read in Scripture, which was spoken and written down by Holy Spirit and in the Holy Spirit, and so do not consider the words:’ What is impossible for men, is possible for God’ (Matt 19:26) “ (79-80). Eckhart emphasizes the ‘Spirit’ in which St Paul spoke and wrote. The Spirit is primal and texts and writings that come out of it are secondary. They are still beautiful and profound, but the spirit is not the written word. At the same time you need to read these text in the same Spirit in which it was written, otherwise it would have a very little value for you; and these are not some intellectual arguments, these are all actual and observable facts.
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